<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Unbeing Dead by WrenWrites</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22899640">Unbeing Dead</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrenWrites/pseuds/WrenWrites'>WrenWrites</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Daisy dies but she gets better, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, the Basira/Daisy is implied</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:22:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,544</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22899640</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrenWrites/pseuds/WrenWrites</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>And she’d thought her last breath would feel heavy. One final weight baring down. But it feels light. So, light. And it is like falling asleep. Hardly frightening at all.  And Daisy rests. But she doesn’t die.  Or: An exploration of existential dread versus nihilism and the relationship between the avatars and fear.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Unbeing Dead</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the end, Daisy goes up to the roof to do it. Or rather, to let it happen. She’d tried to find Basira but, well. She was slippery these days. Off chasing monsters. Daisy doesn’t let herself say <em>hunting</em>, but she thinks it, with a sickly sort of knowing. There was a tightness in Basira’s face Daisy knew. A tightness she hated to see. She’d wanted to say goodbye. Or something Basira would know to be a goodbye in the aftermath. But she was away, and Daisy was too tired to go looking. So she’d written a note. And anyway, Basira seemed like she’d said her goodbyes, and already started in on mourning. Daisy knew that she was <em>better</em>, but she wasn’t what Basira wanted. Certainly not what she <em>needed</em> in all this chaos. Daisy could understand that. Respect it, even. The old Daisy wouldn’t even have questioned it at all. The Hunt thrived on that sort of thing. Cold pragmatism. But now, behind the understanding, there was a festering hurt. Basira hadn’t really been like that before all of…this. She’d been softer. Kinder. Or maybe she had just seemed that way, next to Daisy’s monstrous hunger. Everything had changed.</p><p>Daisy shoulders open the door to the flat concrete roof. It’s a quiet evening. The sky is open and clear. The air is cool and Daisy has to pause as she breathes it in, leaning against the doorframe. She has so little energy left in her, walking up the stairs had felt like an Olympian effort. She tries, when she’s flagging like this, not to think of herself as an old hunting dog. The image of a black and tan creature with drooping jowls limping to the grave. When she settles on the bench someone had installed out here ages ago, and looks at the desiccated potted plants left long abandoned, she feels like one. She’s come up here, after all, to die. In the way that old hounds are said to crawl under the house, or go wandering off into the woods. In the books, it’s written to be a kindness. It doesn’t <em>feel</em> like a kindness. Mostly, Daisy just wants to be alone. She doesn’t want to see what emotion crosses Basira’s face. Doesn’t want to see her mouth crease with sorrow (or worse, lift with relief). She doesn’t want to see Jon’s broken-open expression. The way his shoulders will sag with the added weight of another death on his conscience. As though its his fault.</p><p>As though any of this is anyone’s fault. This, at least, feels almost like making a choice. Refusing to feed The Hunt had felt good, at first. That denial had felt less like starving and more like waiting. Like watching under a bush where some winged creature sat shivering, afraid to take flight. Her body had been taught and trembling, waiting for a command. To chase, to kill. But there was no command coming. Or anyway, not one she intended to obey. The waiting turned to wasting. Basira had tried to be patient, and kind. The way she had always been. But Daisy could <em>smell</em> her disappointment. And the anger that came after. At herself. At Daisy. Jon had been a good friend. Despite the vivid scar on his neck Daisy had given him. But he was also tired, wasting away. Hungry. She stood beside him sometimes and she could hear her blood pounding. She knew he felt the same when he saw her. Questions sat at the back of his throat like living things. Desperate to be asked. Choking him.</p><p>It was easier to be alone. Watching the stars. Feeling the heavy weight of her own breathing. She sets her head against the back of the bench. The Hunt was over. She could finally rest. Just shut her eyes and drift of. “Hello, Detective Tonner.” Daisy wants to sigh. But that feels like too much work. So she just turns her head and doesn’t open her eyes.</p><p>               “Helen.” It’s so much work, the talking. Everything takes more energy than she has, it seems like. Words feel most costly. The Hunt hadn’t ever needed words. And there hadn’t been room for them in the coffin.</p><p>               “I’ve come to keep you company.” Says Helen. Daisy wars with the sudden lightness in her chest.</p><p>               “Don’t want it.” She lies. Helen just laughs. It bounces around them, echoes back on itself.</p><p>               “Sure you do. No one wants to die alone.” Helen says, still laughing.</p><p>               “Lucas does.” Daisy rasps. Helen’s laughter stops. There’s a scuffling sound, and Helen sits beside her.</p><p>               “Yes that’s true. Although I don’t know if you can truly be an avatar if you aren’t <em>afraid</em> first. So maybe Lucas is as afraid of dying alone as anyone.”</p><p>               “What do you mean?” Daisy manages, and it proves a little much. She lists to the side and is surprised when Helen meets her. She’s warm to the touch. Solid. She smells like ozone and rain.</p><p>               “Weren’t you afraid, before the Hunt took you?” Helen asks. The question doesn’t echo. Helen’s voice is so soft. Daisy tries not to think of her father, but the image comes unbidden. His snarling face, his heavy hands.  The way he would look for her when he was drunk. She would stuff herself under her bed, hand cupped over her mouth.</p><p>               “Yes.” She says simply. She could lie, but Helen would know.</p><p>               “When fear lives inside of you, you become it, I think.” Helen says, absently. She runs a hand through Daisy’s hair like a mother might. Or something like a hand. It feels nice.</p><p>               “I’m not afraid anymore.” Daisy says, leaning more heavily into Helen, chasing her lightning smell. “Not of the Hunt.”</p><p>               “No?” Helen asks, and the surprise curls around them both, whispering and shouting the question.</p><p>               “No.” Daisy continues. Tries to take a full breath and only just manages it. “When I was in the coffin it felt like hiding again. I was <em>so scared</em> down there. I thought I would die, and then I thought I <em>never</em> would.” She takes a steadying breath, and then another. Exhaustion presses against her. Opening her eyes feels impossible, but she manages. The stars are bright. “Now I get to die out here. Not in that wretched place. I’m not chasing. I’m not hiding.”</p><p>               “Are you afraid to die?” Helen asks, and when she holds her breath it is like a door creaks open.</p><p>               “No.” Daisy says. And she means it. “Well I was. I was afraid of being alone, and then you came. I was afraid to die, and now I’m doing it.”</p><p>               “You’d like it better if I was Basira.” Helen says, knowing. And Daisy shrugs, because she has no energy left to sigh.</p><p>               “Yes. And I would like her to hold me. And cry, and say it isn’t fair. And that she loves me. But she wouldn’t cry. And I think.” Daisy heaves a breath, and it is so hard. “Well, I think. Even if she doesn’t love me, I love her. And that is enough for me. So, I’m not afraid. I’ll just go to sleep. And maybe I’ll go to Hell. Or maybe I won’t, but I <em>am</em> going to die. If not right now, then later. Someday.”</p><p>               “And you aren’t afraid?” Helen asks. Says.</p><p>               “No.” Says Daisy. “Thank you for sitting with me.” Helen doesn’t say anything, just runs her strange almost-hands through Daisy’s hair. And the stars above them blink into darkness. Daisy shuts her eyes again. And she’d thought her last breath would feel heavy. One final weight baring down. But it feels light. So, light. And it is like falling asleep. Hardly frightening at all.  And Daisy rests.</p><p>But she doesn’t die.</p><p>Hours later, she breathes again. A deep breath not ragged. Like the beginning of a yawn. And she sits upright, and she stretches, and Helen watches her, or doesn’t watch her. It’s hard to tell when her eyes are…like that. But the shape-that-is-Helen (and the spiral) is sort of facing her. Daisy thinks she looked more like a person before. And then Daisy realizes she’s thinking at all, and blinks.</p><p>               “Oh.” She says. Sort of stunned.</p><p>               “Oh.” Says Helen, or she doesn’t say it, the words just sort of form out of nothing. Like when someone is talking on the other side of the door and you build an idea of what they’re saying around the soft sounds that make it past the wood.</p><p>               “What does this mean?” Daisy asks. No one in particular.</p><p>               “What are you afraid of?” Helen asks, and it seems very important the way she says it. Daisy just sniffs. The air still smells crisp. She thinks of the hunt. Of the animal-thrill of chasing and killing. She breathes in, and out. Lets it go.</p><p>               “Plenty.” Daisy says. Which is true.</p><p>               “Oh.” Says Helen, in the way that people sometimes say oh when they are completely lost but want to show they are listening.</p><p>               “I think I lied before about not being afraid, or…I thought I was telling the truth, but I wasn’t.”</p><p>               “You were afraid of dying.” Says Helen. Asks.</p><p>               “Yeah, I think so. But then I didn’t.”</p><p>               “No.” Says Helen, wondering. “You didn’t.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm not really sure what this is...mostly something I've been chewing on since Georgie talked about how she couldn't feel fear anymore, and the idea that the avatars are fed by fear. Will probably continue this at some point and actually feature Georgie, and the aftermath of Daisy's 'death'. But for now, have this.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>